Some of the institutional investors at a forum in Singapore on Wednesday showed interest in China's Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors, which allows institutional investors outside the Chinese mainland to invest their offshore yuan in the onshore capital market.
Some of the institutional investors from Singapore have submitted or are in the process of submitting applications for RQFII quota, industry insiders said at the forum organized by the local unit of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.
China and Singapore announced in October last year that the RQFII program will be extended to Singapore, with an aggregate quota of 50 billion yuan.
China rolled out the RQFII program in 2011 in Hong Kong, and then gradually increased the quota to an accumulated 270 billion yuan and expanded the program to cover more and more institutional investors. The cap on the proportion of shares they can hold in a company had also been raised.
Chinese regulators have so far approved 200.5 billion yuan of quota in total for 62 institutional investors outside the Chinese mainland under the RQFII program.
Asked whether investors are still interested in putting their money in China, Angel Chia, chief executive officer of Shenyin Wanguo Singapore Pte Ltd, said, "why not?"
Speaking to about 150 professionals at the forum, Jimmy Koh, managing director and head of research and investor relations, United Overseas Bank Limited, said that China is aiming to have " controlled liberalization" when carrying out its financial reforms, which he said is unprecedented but natural given the size and the complexity of the Chinese economy. --Xinhua